


Of Mercury and Canvas Ghosts

by Acid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Closets, Closure, Coming Out, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hogwarts, Memories, Mirror of Erised, Misgendering, Name Changes, Pensieves, Post-War, Self-Portrait, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26051416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acid/pseuds/Acid
Summary: Harry's journey through Severus Snape's memories uncovers an unexpected mystery. Without the guidance of Dumbledore's portrait, will Harry ever follow the breadcrumbs left for him to make sense of the long-lost truth?
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore & Severus Snape, Harry Potter & Severus Snape
Comments: 17
Kudos: 54
Collections: Expelli-gender! 2020





	Of Mercury and Canvas Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [handschuhmaus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/gifts).



> Mainly, I focused on the following portions of the prompts given: "trans but deeply closeted and/or hiding a long-ago-to-the-books transition Albus, and how he deals with one of the other listed characters questioning their gender/transitioning." and "It could even be interesting to have a slightly outsider perspective on a Severus-mentors-Harry relationship, with transness in the mix." I hope you like where these ended up leading me.
> 
> All the thanks go to H., who hunted down all of my omitted articles and my odd turns of phrase, and even enjoyed doing so!

_"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."_  
_Antoine de Saint-Exupéry_

* * *

"Hello! Headmaster, are you here?" Harry said it and waited. It was a habit by now, but not a very soothing one.

_Nothing. I don't know why I expected anything different today._

In the darkness of the circular office that Harry still - and always - thought of as Dumbledore's sanctuary, one particular frame stood out as an empty space, the drawing of an empty chair rather than a proper portrait. The writing on the ornate frame proclaimed the void to be: A. Dumbledore. 1881 - 1997.

 _Just like yesterday, and the week before. All right, then. Time for a trip down memory lane. Again. Maybe this time I'll find something useful. I have to. I've been at it too long to stop now. This has to be the key to solving everything. Everything that's wrong!_ And there was a whole lot of wrongness in Harry's life, like the entire day so far, and yesterday, and the day before. Ever since the Battle of Hogwarts, to think of it. He was supposed to have his life all figured out by now, but no matter how he tried to make sense of the world without Voldemort, the world with an actual future, there were no easy answers or barely any answers at all.

Harry sighed and strode past it into the alcove containing the Pensieve and then stared inside. He uncorked the precious flask he had brought with him and let out Snape's last memories into the depths of the sieve; they swirled like the greying strands of a mermaid in the murky depths, occasionally rising to the surface, teasing with a glimmer and then sinking back down. The darkness of the alcove lent a sombre shadow to the surface of the sieve and its contents. It glistened a quicksilver-grey, just as much of a dim mirror as a dark well. Now, with Harry gripping the ornate rim and leaning over the surface, it was practically black. Snape's gaze was once dimming just like this - as it grew fixed, blank, and empty, shortly after Harry granted him his wish and met his eyes.

The House-elves had never found Snape's body when they were sent to bring it into the Great Hall. They reported that once they searched the Shack, nothing remained there but a large bloodstain on the floorboards and the signs of a body dragged through the dust. A flask of hastily collected memories was all Harry had left to figure out the mystery; without it he would have doubted that whatever he and his friends had seen that day had happened at all.

A rustle echoed from the wall of portraits of former Headmasters and Headmistresses. Hopeful, Harry turned to the particular portrait hanging on the wall past the Headmaster's chair, but the frame was a dark rectangle, empty of any inhabitants. Ever the picture of solid strength in life, Headmaster Dumbledore offered him no solution, not even the comfort of his calming company, even if as the mere memory of a living legend captured by paint and magic.

Harry never thought of Dumbledore as a legend though: he remembered his down-to-earth demeanour and kindness. He mourned a gentler man.

_“What do you see when you look in the mirror?”_

It still made Harry smile, that memory of them meeting in front of the Mirror of Erised, when Harry was just a boy, caught by the Headmaster staring at his own reflection for hours - it was real but not, better than real, because it held everything he wished for. _Family._

Didn't everyone see the same thing in the mirror when they looked? How could they not?

The Headmaster's explanation of his vision in the mirror was so much simpler, far more mundane than Harry ever hoped to hear. 

_“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick woollen socks.”_

Perhaps Dumbledore was telling the complete truth, and perhaps not. _In any case, it's so nice to have everything else you could possibly desire! Headmaster Dumbledore was a lucky man in those happier times. I sure hope whoever painted his portrait has given him a perfect pair of socks._

 _I wish things were that easy now._

_But they never are... I should know better by now._

Determined, Harry looked down and braced himself for another trip into Severus Snape's memories, the whirlwind of Snape's childhood. _Cokeworth_. _Mum as a young girl._ Diving into these memories for days on end was not the same as wishing to break through the surface of the Mirror of Erised and to step into that life where his mum was within reach. It wasn't all futile daydreams! This was important, in more ways than one.

This trip held meaning for Harry beyond escaping reality and postponing the mourning for so many lives lost. Besides, what if he missed some important detail that would shine a light on the mystery of the disappearance of Snape's body? He had to keep looking.

Harry leaned in and allowed the Pensieve to pull him into a different world: downwards, but also up, up and away, toward that girl on the swings, soaring as a trapeze artist against the sky of Mum's childhood playground. He stood in the centre of it and right in front of him, his mum launched herself skyward with a burst of laughter and soared, airborne with genuine joy and magic. On the ground, the older girl, his Aunt Petunia, shrieked at the sight. "Lily, don't do it!"

The shriek was always the same, and Mum's brief flight through the air was the same graceful arc as ever. Only afterwards something subtle and unmistakable had gone awry: as if a shimmer of fog had settled over the memory and something was different this time. Distinctly different. Something was not right. Harry startled and searched for the source of his unease. 

Severus Snape cowered in the shadow of the bushes. He was nine or ten, looking sallow, small, and stringy. There was something odd about him though, and Harry searched for the source of that subtle distress when he looked at the boy's unfed, unwashed form. Snape looked even younger now, even smaller, drowning under that shabby, overlarge coat, a dull flush of pink tinting his cheeks in the presence of Harry's mother. He and Lily gathered around an animated flower, moved by Lily's magic as Harry watched on. He could recite that familiar exchange by heart. 

"You're... you're a witch," a small, sincere admission sounded so genuinely awed in Snape's boyish tones.

Harry stared as his mum marched back to her sister, expecting Snape to follow and Snape did, approaching timidly like a stray rather than an average child on the playground.

"You are a witch!" Snape whispered, in a way that was almost reverent. "I’ve been watching you for a while. But there’s nothing wrong with that. My mum’s one, and I’m a wizard -"

Petunia’s shrill laughter, cold and mocking, was even more of a slap in the face than it had been before. Harry winced. "Wizard?!" she shrieked. "Ha! I know who you are!" She turned to her sister. "She's that crazy Snape girl who keeps telling everyone she's a boy. She's not right in the head, Lils -"

Harry blinked and stared at Snape in those mismatched clothes. Snape wore a woman's smock and a pair of jeans that was far too short. His hair was overlong, hanging in sweaty locks down to his shoulders, and his voice was as high-pitched, with a hint of shyness, as any nine-year-old's. What was Aunt Petunia going on about?

"These _witches_ live down Spinner's End by the river, but _she_ came all the way down here to spy on us! Stay away from her. She'll give you lice, or leeches, or worse!"

Snape wrapped his skinny arms around himself. The gesture looked like a habit, as if he had been perpetually cold for every year of his brief life, even in the coat draped around him, settling like folded wings. "I'm a wizard," he repeated, greasy-haired and as uncomfortable as a bat in broad daylight. "Stupid Muggle. Who'd want to spy on you!"

This exchange was all new. Different from what Harry had seen in Snape's memories before. Did the Pensieve do something to the memories Harry had deposited inside of it? What was happening to them? Harry could do nothing but watch the scene unfold.

“Lily, come on, we’re leaving!” The girls glared at Snape as they walked off the playground, abandoning him to his complete solitude. It was only when their footsteps faded on the gravel path that Harry recognised the scowl of complete and utter disappointment on Snape's sallow, angular face. The bitterness in his glare was so unchildlike and so crushing, it settled over Harry like a Dementor's presence and made him wish for the comfort of his Patronus.

The memory ended as abruptly as ever, and then, Harry was thrown into another, as the scenery rearranged itself around him in a flash of a second, the thicket of trees surrounding Snape and Lily, as she asked: "Does it matter, being Muggle-born?" 

Long-haired and slouched, his odd smock cast aside on the grass, Snape, suddenly all black-eyes and eagerness, shook his head with surprising confidence... That look he gave Harry's mum was all wonder. "No."

The thicket of trees around them swirled and morphed into the high arches with the busy train schedules beneath. Muggle crowds emerged from the fog. And on and on the memories swirled around Harry, to the platform nine and three-quarters, where once a jealous Petunia had shrieked 'freak' at her sister, as Snape and his mum looked on, both hunched and thin and sour, resembling one another closely. This time though, instead of trying to break through the crowd toward his mum, Harry remained near them, something he had never done before in this memory.

"Come, lass," Snape's mum nudged. "Don't forget your Gobstones." Snape, who wore a long, misshapen coat, winced, wrapping his layers around himself at that form of address. Snape's mum's hands, quick as spiders, slipped a velvet bag with something small, presumably Gobstones, into the side pocket of Snape's coat and then fussed over the wrinkles over Snape's collar as he shrugged away from her touch. "I expect a letter a week, do you hear?"

"Mum!"

"And stay out of trouble!" There was a name murmured then, afterwards, unfamiliar and plain, unmistakably a girl's name, and Snape responded to it with a brisk nod and wheeled his trunk toward the train.

Harry rushed after him as if he could somehow address Snape by the name he knew and Snape would answer, solving the riddle of this dichotomy once and for all but instead, the memory by the Hogwarts Express dissolved into a dark, dusty hall within Hogwarts. Harry knew this hall, he once sat in his pyjamas in the middle of it, as a child, during his first year in the castle, staring on and on at the wondrous sight of everything he’d ever wanted. 

And sure enough, the Mirror of Erised stood uncovered just where Harry expected it to be and Snape, no older than twelve, wearing Slytherin robes and his mother's smock underneath cowered in front of it. He lifted his hand toward the glass, and stared at the scene within with an odd sort of greed, the same kind of thirsty need that he usually looked at Harry's mum with.

Fascinated, Harry took in the scene. It was certainly Hogwarts. This was surely Snape. He'd never had a chance to see this memory before, no matter how many times he’d emptied out his flask into the Pensieve. _How odd. Why haven't I? What's different this time around?_

Harry had no answers to the dozens of questions on his mind.

In the mirror, Snape's reflection was slightly older than the child that stood before it. The reflection looked about fourteen or fifteen, a young man. Harry remembered that young man as a nervous creature, stalking the halls with a jerky walk of a spider, and the same student harassed by Harry's dad and the Marauders, stood trapped behind the surface of the mirror, lips moving with unheard words. Only the reflection's shoulders were spread wider than the person standing before it, and Snape's reflection was stretched out proud and tall, with Lily at his side, smiling and slipping a hand around his elbow. The Snape in the mirror held up a book in front of him, and it was opened to the first page: there was a single phrase there in his own handwriting. Harry squinted, coming closer and peering over the child Snape's shoulder. 'This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince'. The younger Snape, shoulders poised like unfolded wings over the bulk of his chest, looked down at the cramped handwriting with reverie and hugged his knees to himself, twin tear tracks glistening on the sides of his cheeks.

Suddenly, there was a voice behind the young Snape. That same name, a girl's name that was previously spoken by Snape's mother on the train station, was now repeated in Albus Dumbledore's unmistakeable soft tones, followed by "What are you doing here?"

Snape flinched and looked away from the mirror and off to the side, allowing the reflection showing his innermost desire to fade. Just as Snape did before, Harry couldn't bear to take his eyes off the splash of mum's red hair and her brilliant grin until the very last glimpse of her had faded. And then, Dumbledore spoke and the words exchanged between the teacher and the student brought up an odd sense of déjà vu for Harry. 

The talk between Snape and Dumbledore reminded him of the conversation he too had as a child: that one winter lesson about dwelling on dreams and forgetting to live. In this new memory, Snape listened, absorbing the information about the Mirror with the thirst of an eager student wanting to stay out of trouble. Just as Harry had been once, Snape was reluctant to be steered away from his find but did so quickly, nervously, springing to his feet and following along with Dumbledore, as he was warned he would not find the Mirror here again, should he return.

They paused, on the way out to the corridor, and Dumbledore's gaze glistened as Dumbledore himself seemed drawn to the mirror, his stare settled on it and stilled, as if the moment of meeting an unseen gaze from the other side was suspended in time and space. Snape watched with a suspicious look, observing the Headmaster caught in the same trap he was pulled away from, supposedly for his own good. "Professor Dumbledore," he asked softly. "What do you see when you look at it?"

With a sudden shrug, Dumbledore stepped back. His face grew standoffish and stern, as if he had been insulted. He pointedly turned his back on the Mirror and his demeanour changed, his stance grew taller and more imposing and his stare was downright cross, unexpectedly so, over poor Snape, who stepped back, retreating inwards, shuddering in his school robes and pulling them around himself as if he was cold. Harry winced. If he were in Snape's shoes, he'd be flinching too.

"If you absolutely must know, I see myself holding a pair of thick woollen socks. And what a nice pair it is," Dumbledore said at last and then added, calmer than before. "You'll do best to forget the Mirror ever existed."

"Yes, Professor Dumbledore."

"And, Ms Snape, fifty points from Slytherin for wandering away from your Common Room, looking for trouble. You will not come back here again, understood?"

This was odd, so incredibly awkward. First his Aunt, then Snape's mother, then even the Headmaster. They all kept repeating the same thing, saying an unfamiliar name, calling Snape a girl, but Harry knew it was all wrong. Snape was, well, Snape. And Snape wasn't a girl, ever. Why did these memories in the Pensieve suddenly change to say he was? Were they corrupted by a curse? Was the Pensieve broken somehow? Perhaps Harry had looked too many times, and that made them warp and mix up reality with a dream, a peculiar delusion. Harry had checked the memories just two days ago, and they never contained something so outrageously odd. But who was to say that the next time he'd examine these memories, he wouldn’t see a herd of Erumpents prancing through the Great Hall, or everyone sporting a stylish pair of horns. It wouldn't be any more outrageous than what he has seen already.

But no, this may have been unexpected, but it was far from nonsensical. The memories unfolded in a way that made perfect sense, they fit together, somehow, and that alone was suspicious and puzzling.

Harry surfaced from the stream of memories ending on that unfamiliar one and felt as if he'd walked through a chilled waterfall. Despite it all, one odd thought haunted him still. _Did Dumbledore ever tell the truth to anyone about what he saw in the Mirror, aside from talking about those socks of his? Was it all an evasion, a white lie, regardless of who did the asking? I thought there was something odd about his tone, even back then._

It was pointless to ask that question, wasn't it? He'd never know the truth now. Snape's memory had no exposure or access to whatever vision had Headmaster Dumbledore so visibly shaken. Snape could only pass on what he knew and saw. And that meant there was no one alive he could ask about that moment in time. 

Except maybe, if a miracle happened, as Harry had hoped it did, and Snape somehow survived the ordeal at the Shrieking Shack...

If Snape was, somehow, still alive, Harry had so many questions for the man, the first one being: who are you? _What is your truth?_

_What is your name?_

* * *

_"If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself."_  
_George Orwell (1984)_

There was an odd sort of newness to the spell that brought Harry away from Hogwarts grounds, out of his element. A simple act of cross-country Apparation should have never felt so visceral, so gutting, like stepping out of a cellar -- or a cupboard -- when you've never seen sunlight in your lifetime. Perhaps, just maybe, he's spent far too much time hiding from the world in the castle. At the very least though, Headmistress McGonagall was accommodating to his quirks and had mentioned neither his week-long disappearances in his temporary quarters, nor his obsessive use of the Pensieve in her office. As days went by and summer came and went, Harry felt adrift. He needed space. Or time. To tell the truth he didn't know what he needed but he needed something. Perhaps closure. Perhaps reassurance. Perhaps a dream of a new future, a better one. But there was only now, and Harry's insides were twisted up into tangled knots, and every vital organ of his body was flattened and pushed through an infinitely thin magical funnel. _This is normal,_ he told himself, even as he braced for more of the same. _That's how these long trips go. Should've taken Floo a part of the way instead. Except I can't think of any magical place within a reasonable distance of where I'm going. Ugh. Here we go! Almost..._

At the end of the long whirlwind of Apparation, Harry landed in the mud by the dirty river. This was the place, he was sure of it. He made a face at the stench of rotten fish and the underlying bitter coal smoke, although the nearest smokestack was a long walk ahead.

There was a path to the side and Harry's boots made unpleasant squelching noises as he slogged toward it. Immediately, he wished for the weather to be cold enough to freeze the mud solid, even though the chill already made him pull up his collar and his every exhale was a visible puff of white in front of his face. 

Just a bit longer, ahead and up, to where the mud and the dry clumps of grass ended, and the cobbled road edged with the most depressing row of two-up-two-down brick houses began.

 _"These witches live down Spinner's End by the river..."_ young Aunt Petunia's voice kept echoing in Harry's head.

Struggling to wrap his cold-stiff fingers around his wand handle, Harry cast a quick detection spell. A small spark, no larger than an ember flowing off the dying wick of a candle, emerged from the tip of his wand and flew toward the last house on the block, the one that looked abandoned and half-crumbling with age, in dire need of repair.

_This one, then. I need to know the truth._

Harry expected to spend hours trying to figure out the wards of the place. If anything, Snape's work would surely be as expert as the spells to protect his precious potion stores from theft, but the heavy front door swung open at the briefest touch of Harry's knuckles. It was as if he was expected here, as if he was being welcomed in.

"Lumos!" He stepped into the cramped, dusty room, and it was like stepping into a long-abandoned library. Wall-to-wall bookcases adorned most of the space. A worn sofa marked the spot by the window. An armchair twice as worn was turned toward the unused fireplace, and on the stack of papers by it was a suspiciously bright crystal dish filled with Bertie Bott's Beans: the green and the red, as splendid as the trickling gems trapped behind glass, marking Hogwarts house points. This dish was so out of place in this Muggle hovel, that Harry blinked and stepped toward it to examine it from an angle. Awkwardly, he perched on the edge of the seat which Snape must've used last, and the worn leather creaked twice, allowing him to settle down. As soon as Harry reached for the beans though, the entire bright handful of scooped up sweets swept back and in their place a miniature phial with several bright long strands swirling within rested on Harry's palm.

 _Memories!_ They were meant for Harry. _Oh. This can shine the light onto everything! This could be the key to understanding what really went on._

There was even a label on the phial, not in the cramped, familiar handwriting that Harry grew to associate with the scribbled instructions on the margins of his Potions textbook or the scathing critique on his early schoolboy essays. The label, bright and cheery, was printed and as plain as a lolly wrapper which had come undone and as unlike Snape as that well-worn sofa. Harry squinted and brought the phial closer to his face.

_'Stop searching, Harry. Farewell.'_

_Oh shit. This is Snape's doing! Has to be. He is alive!_ And with that realisation, and with a startling ticking noise, bean by bean began disappearing from the dish to his right, a countdown to a handful... as the curtains ruffled with a magical breeze, the surrounding air darkened, the walls began closing in, and it was as if the house's remaining magical wards awoke all at once and began expelling the intruder. Tick. Tock. Harry watched the beans melt to three green ones and one red, then the red was gone, and there were only two green, then one, then... he braced himself!

_Tick._

Silence.

He once more stood in front of the heavy door of the crumbling shack of a brick house in front of the dirty river. But no matter how hard he knocked or pushed at the handle, no physical activity or charm did Harry any good. The door was locked once more, the curtains shuttered, and the windows completely blocked. All Harry had to prove that he had ever been inside was a phial with a handful of memories in his robe pocket.

He braced himself for another long round of Apparation, this time to Hogsmeade, where, after a short walk toward the Hogwarts grounds, the Pensieve waited for him in Former Headmaster Dumbledore's office.

Headmistress McGonagall was always so accommodating to Harry's quest. Though he doubted she minded the company of her former student, in the little free time she had to ask Harry about his day. For the most part, he was left to his devices, in the spacious office filled with portraits and memories of its past occupants. Harry couldn't help but shake the feeling she was worried about how he was getting on after the war, but she didn't pry too often. Perhaps she too used the Pensieve now and then to calm her thoughts, but for what it's worth, Harry never saw her near it: maybe curling up on a sunny spot in the windowsill next to a saucer of milk was all she had ever required to rest and recharge. In any case, Harry did not feel intruded upon during his frequent Pensieve dives.

Today was no different. After the brief offer of tea, soon enough it was just Harry and the Pensieve, just as he intended.

One by one, the newly-found memories spilled out, uncorked, and Harry watched them tangle with each other like seagrass in the darkest depths of the ocean, like the world's thinnest and longest braid.

He took one frantic breath and then forced himself, face first, into the chilly liquid of the sieve as the darkness within the magical bowl gathered around him and dragged him into its depths.

The first memory Harry was pulled into could have easily been Snape's.

He stood on the hilltop surrounded by a handful of trees, their bare branches stretching up like castaway claws into the lonely skies. The wind whipped all around him. By Harry's side, Snape, broad-shouldered, clad in dark robes, panted, clearly afraid of what's coming next.

A jet of lightning as blinding as the strongest of battle magic burst through the air, and Snape dropped to his knees, his wand landing in the dirt a few steps away.

"Don't kill me."

"That was not my intention."

The rustling, mostly leafless branches battered by the storm drowned out the sound of Dumbledore's Apparation from far away to Snape's side.

"Well, Severus?" Dumbledore said, and then his face settled into a grim mask as he paused, just for a second. "You're no longer my student, not in the way I remember. So, it's Severus now, is it?"

Snape's face turned ashen with a grimace of what looked like physical pain. "How did you find out?" he croaked. "The Dark Lord said all would be forgotten, gone."

Dumbledore's brow furled. "Nearly all, as far as I can tell. It is a remarkable work of magic to alter a life to such an extent, all for the sake of revealing one's truth to the world. Is this what he offered you in return for your allegiance? Ah, now I see..."

Snape knelt at Dumbledore's feet. Harry had never seen the man look so defeated.

"You mustn't fret about that. For what it's worth even now I struggle to remember the idea of you being anything but who you are today. I cannot recall how you looked like and certainly not the name you aimed to erase, if that's what you're worried about, Death Eater. So why are you here?" Dumbledore paused, facing the wind whipping his hair and staring at the broken figure in front of him. "What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?”

Harry frowned, watching Snape so low on the ground, wringing his hands. He looked like a madman with strands of greasy black hair blowing all around him as he tried to assure Dumbledore of his sincerity. "I come with a warning. A request. Please!"

A flick of Dumbledore's wand forced the storm out of a bubble of silence surrounding the two men as they faced one another on top of the darkened hill. "Looks like you already have your greatest wish, so what could you possibly ask of me, Death Eater?"

"The prophecy…" Snape stumbled and broke into the frantic explanation of who it was connected to. Harry's mother, Lily Evans. 

“If she means so much to you,” said Dumbledore, “surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?”

"I have already asked for too much of him, I cannot -"

Midway through a broken explanation, Snape was stopped by an outcry. “You disgust me,” Dumbledore spat, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Once again, Snape was a shrinking, pleading figure before him, berated for his own selfish desire to keep Harry's mum safe first, in exchange for the remaining lives at stake.

"Hide them all,” Snape croaked then. “Keep her - them - safe. Please!"

Just as Snape issued that final plea for his family's lives, Harry looked up. Dumbledore's stare was neither forgiving nor kind. It was calculating and stern. "What will you give in return?"

Harry already knew the answer to that: in Snape's case, it was everything, and always.

Slowly the sound of the storm flooded Harry's ears and when it eased, the scene around him was no longer the hilltop. He was at the Hogwarts of his childhood and his younger self was caught staring into the magical mirror he did not yet know the name of, longing for his family to be around him. Harry remembered the mostly soothed ache, the warmth of the scene caught in the mirror's reflection, and above it all, the knowledge that it was ultimately beyond his reach. He couldn't help looking in anyway, because that's all he existed to hope for. All he craved to have in his life. Without it, he was incomplete.

Headmaster Dumbledore, unnoticed until now, slipped off the desk to sit with Harry on the floor and offered words both kind and understanding. "The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror," the Headmaster explained to Harry.

Younger Harry had wondered, at that moment in time, if such a man ever existed. Was Headmaster Dumbledore that man? If there was ever someone who would look in the mirror and see nothing but what they already had, it surely had to be the Headmaster!

Harry knew better now. Not wanting a single thing in the entire world seemed impossible. Perhaps that's what life was about, always wanting something you didn't already have?

"The mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow," Headmaster Dumbledore informed Harry's younger self and the boy Harry once was had to pry, trying to find out what the Headmaster saw in the mirror.

_Socks. Obviously._

His younger self rushed out the door, but Dumbledore remained in this memory. A mystery. An enigma. He faced the mirror as one would face an old friend, a companion long gone, with closed eyes - not quite believing one's hearing but wanting the moment to last. Once Dumbledore opened them at last, there was something unexpected. Something mundane and impossible all at once.

A woman stood in the full-length mirror, clad in splendid robes, a twin reflection of reality, larger than life, in glorious regal purple, with a string of pearls around her neck and festive ribbons woven into her hair spilling over a delicate shawl. Her curls were tamed by five phoenix feather pins into a loose bun and her brow arched mischievously. Sky blue eyes twinkled through half-moon lenses as she faced the intruder of her reality.

Headmaster Dumbledore let out a cautious breath, one long-fingered hand reached and pressed against the mirror. They stood still then, face to face, the reflection and the subject, and for a second there, Harry couldn't tell which one of them was more real. 

"Ariana," Headmaster Dumbledore breathed, a mere reflection of her, as she confidently stated something that had to be her name. As her reflection in the breathing world echoed the same.

But then her features twisted as the figure in front of the mirror tore away from the locked gaze. Professor Dumbledore pulled back with great effort and turned away as if turning from a loved one's grave. With one hand still on the mirror's frame, Dumbledore's fingers produced a decisive snap, and then both the mirror and the Headmaster were in another room Harry recognised as the Headmaster's office.

The Headmaster collapsed on the edge of the nearest seat, still staring into the mirror's murky depths, trying to seek something that was clearly craved. Inside was a blur of purple and rainbow colours, with a glimpse of twinkling, twin blue dots.

This memory left behind for Harry had to be entirely Dumbledore's doing, his legacy, his life. It could not be anything but that. He was all alone in a place only Dumbledore could have remembered. The door to Dumbledore's quarters was ajar, and through the gap, Harry got a glimpse of Dumbledore's bedroom, undecorated and nearly empty. Dumbledore's narrow bed stood in the corner, plainer than Harry would have expected, like an Infirmary cot. What the mirror showed was far more glamorous and elaborate than anything else in Dumbledore's presence.

 _Ariana._ Harry thought and then imagined Headmaster -- Headmistress? -- Ariana Dumbledore strolling through the school grounds, offering lemon sherberts with the flick of her wrist, bestowing grandmotherly -- slightly overbearing -- affection upon all children in her care.

To think of it, it was not any different from what Hogwarts had already had, for so many years. The idea came easily, far too easily, like a well-worn glove sliding over one's wrist. Is that how Dumbledore too had felt at the sight of the mirror's reflection? Is that why it was so hard to let go of that familiarity, of that ease, of that utter peace of simply existing within the mirror's frame?

Harry had so few points of reference. He could list on the fingers of one hand the moments when he was truly at peace. But he knew they were the moments to be cherished. He remembered well the hours spent before the Mirror of Erised as a boy and that was enough to fill his heart with that impossible longing for his family all over again.

Harry had to keep himself from settling down on the floor in front of the mirror even now, in someone else's memory.

No matter how long he waited, Dumbledore did not stir or speak and the mirror went dim at last.

The fog overtook the surroundings and the scene barely even changed. The room went dark, from day to night, and lit candles appeared overhead. The contents of Dumbledore's desk rearranged themselves and gained a new stack of papers.

Dumbledore, with deeper circles under those striking blue eyes, sagged over his seat, with a blackened hand dangling at his side and Snape was trying to assist him with a goblet of the golden potion. No longer duelling opposites but allies, they exchanged words, quick and rapid and full of strategy and heartbreak, until Snape knew exactly what was coming, what he had to do.

“And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?”

Harry knew what Dumbledore would say next by heart. He watched it in the Pensieve so many times before and yet it still felt fresh as if he was living it instead of just watching it unravel.

"Thank you, Severus…"

"Headmaster..."

"That will be all." 

With a grimace, Snape complied, striding out the door, but the memory carried on. Headmaster Dumbledore rose with significant effort and then limped to his private quarters. Harry, his heart in his throat at the realisation of uncovering yet another coveted memory left behind by his unforgettable mentor, followed suit. 

"Oh, Severus, my dear boy..."

In the corner, Fawkes' perch sat, occupied, and the bird turned lazily toward his human, fluffing up bright orange feathers.

"He was always so worried that I'd pry further, past Riddle's magic, but I had hoped with time I could gain his trust, show him that I understand. Better perhaps than anyone."

Harry struggled to make out the mutterings of what seemed to be a private monologue or a one-sided chat with a feathered companion, but then it stopped.

By Dumbledore's bedside stood a mirror. And not just any mirror, but the ornate, glimmering frame of the Mirror of Erised. Like a wanderer stumbling toward a desert oasis, Dumbledore limped toward it.

Harry, a step behind him, froze, as the mirror's reflection dimmed and swirled and faded and then became someone else entirely, the details brightening and sharpening from within the magical murk, and that seemed to make Dumbledore hold his breath and reach out with a gasp, as his good hand pressed against the mirror's smooth surface.

An elderly witch stood behind the looking glass. The same one Harry had seen before already _._ Her fashionable robes were ornate and extravagant in their sunset-purple colours and lacy gold trim. Her feathered cloak, a mimicry of Fawkes' wings, fell to the ground, enveloping her tall, corseted figure. A heavy gold ring with Dumbledore's family crest adorned her left hand and the long strings of pearl and sapphires hung from her neck. Her silver curls hung unadorned, spilling out like a shawl over her shoulders. Her half-moon spectacles framed sky-blue eyes.

She looked like an extravagant portrait, the kind that hung in Dumbledore's office, of Hogwarts Headmistresses long gone.

With a heavy sigh, Dumbledore shuddered as the reflection behind the charmed glass mirrored those exact gestures and pressed her hand against the glass as well, her every gesture, if not appearance, a reflection of Dumbledore's current reality, more real than life itself.

"Ariana," Dumbledore said then, and the reflection was saying it with him, their lips moving at precisely the same time, in perfect sync. "Ariana Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. My name is Ariana."

Beside the woman, a blonde girl had appeared. She could not have been older than fourteen, dressed in old-fashioned robes, with a sweet, absentminded smile on her face. Harry leaned in to catch Dumbledore's whisper, as, just as Dumbledore beside Harry, the reflection looked down at her companion. "You always said we could share a name. After all, you were so eager to share everything, even socks, even though I was too foolish to appreciate it. I wish you were here to truly see this now, sister. I wish someone could see."

Dumbledore and the reflection faced each other, two pairs of twinkling sky-blue eyes behind respective pairs of spectacles. The girl on the left slid her hand into her older sister's hold. A darker, older figure of Aberforth Dumbledore on the background, slid his arms over both his sisters' shoulders, in a protective, gently inquiring gesture.

Past the lonely, curse-stricken, black-handed figure beside him, Harry looked up and faced the older woman out of the pair, in the mirror, and he could have sworn it was her who was speaking in a bare whisper, gentle as only a confession to a child can be. "Severus disgusted me once. For living his truth. Perhaps he is the brave one..."

Several pained breaths sounded like a sob, and Harry couldn't help but think of another lost soul captivated by the mirror's reflection: twin tear tracks glistening over the sallow cheeks of a young man.

"Enough! What's done is done." With a stare as pained as if witnessing an epitaph, as if bidding a final farewell at a funeral, Dumbledore pointed a wand tip against that greying temple and seemed to choke on a breath that couldn't ever be let out fully. "Obliviate!" The words were spat out and Harry almost rushed to Dumbledore, forgetting he could not change the past or affect this memory. In the mirror, the vision of Dumbledore's family, of Dumbledore's self, faded as the mirror's swirling depths did as well, and the strand of memory broke free of Dumbledore's temple and remained at the tip of an unsteady wand. Something in Dumbledore's reaction, in that defeated stare, told Harry that this was a familiar routine, not a new thing at all but a habit, one that happened again and again and again.

All alone in his private quarters, Headmaster Dumbledore sat still, eyes sky blue and gaze vacant, as if processing an enormous loss, in front of the empty mirror, the swirling white at the upthrust wand tip, curly and light, like a stream of smoke.

"Alas, that spell never works as intended," Dumbledore whispered to the swirling strand of memory at the wand tip. "I ought to know by now. I may not remember it all, but I _know_ what you are. You're the name I want to die with."

An ornate flask was summoned with a tired wave and then, Dumbledore directed the memory inside, trapping it with an equally elaborate cork. The label on the flask held a single word, signed in Dumbledore's looping handwritten script.

_Ariana._

The flask was nearly full to the brim with what looked like equally strong and shining silver memory strands. Memories, what seemed like hundreds of them. Enough to weave a small canvas. Enough to make up an entire life.

Harry surfaced from the Pensieve with a head full of thoughts. As he glared back at Dumbledore's portrait, it remained free of any human presence. The canvas did not move at all, unwilling to reveal the rest of the portrait's secrets. Or perhaps the secrets ran so deep, they could never be painted at all.

The golden plate secured against the frame said: A. Dumbledore. 

The seat within was empty, just as empty as the seat in the Headmistress McGonagall's office, as Harry stood there, lost as a wayward student waiting for the adult in charge to deliver the verdict: points taken from Gryffindor, or worse, detention for witnessing something so private, something he had no right to see. 

Life was so simple then, when the worst thing that could ever happen to Harry was merely serving detention. Life was anything but simple now.

* * *

_"Do you suppose she's a wildflower?"_  
_Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass)_

The lakeshore on Hogwarts grounds remained empty, free of students who weren't due to arrive for another couple weeks, at the beginning of the term. The wind picked up in the evening, as the sun slid slowly toward the horizon, an orange disk slipping behind the airy lavender cloud cover, like a phoenix bursting through the cloud of ash at the nearest gust of wind. In that golden glow, Harry's boot prints left a steady trail in the mud of the shoreline, leading up to Dumbledore's tomb.

The structure was a white marble presence, shining through the cluster of surrounding trees, in the shadow of the Forbidden Forest, impossible to miss, not that Harry ever forgot the way.

He couldn't help but be drawn here, in his quest for answers, this one memorial to the hero of his Hogwarts existence. There was no Hogwarts without Dumbledore.

"Great man, Dumbledore," Hagrid's tones rang out harshly through Harry's moment of private reminiscence, but even that now sounded wrong, as never before, in light of everything Harry had seen today.

 _'I know_ what _you are. You're the name I want to die with.'_

Harry might not have understood all the reasons why Dumbledore saw what he saw in the mirror, but he knew it to be true nonetheless. After all, no one lied to themselves when they were completely alone in the solitude of their own reflection. He couldn't let this one image in his head go: it overshadowed the memory of the grand funeral, of heartfelt speeches and tear-inducing memorials, of enormous crowds gathered to remember the life of an entirely different, private person. Turned out that wasn't a memorial to everything Dumbledore was and that didn't seem fair, not at all.

The least Harry could do now is to spend a few hours mourning someone properly. _If at least one person mourns and remembers a name, her proper name, isn't that good enough? After all, it was the idea that counted. And Harry had to do it, if only for himself, and the memory of someone who was almost family._

 _Screw that!_ Harry told himself sternly. _Dumbledore is family. My family. Our family - the family of everyone at Hogwarts! No matter what name she went by! It's only fair to remember her properly. Someone ought to._

His hands shook as he slid them over the weather-worn stone's edge. _Ariana's tomb._

 _Shit, I'm doing it all wrong._ How would one celebrate the life of a Headmistress? How would one honour her memory? It was all so new. _I should have brought flowers._ He wasn't as good as Hermione conjuring up the flowers for his parents' grave, but still he took two steps back and pulled out his wand, pointing it toward the patch of grass.

"Accio wildflowers!" A handful of daisies and heather formed a small wreath, as Harry levitated it atop the heavy block of stone, a splash of pink and purple and white that reminded him of Ariana's elaborate dress and jewels. All that elegance trapped behind the mirror's surface contained in a single memory strand. Overhead, the sky shone in the flames of pink and purple and orange, like Ariana's festive phoenix-coloured cloak.

This wreath was all Harry had to offer in memoriam and it wasn't enough, wasn't nearly enough as an enormous thank you to the overarching presence in Harry's teenage years before he came of age.

Turned out he held onto the wrong name all along in his memory. He wouldn't make that mistake again.

He hoped, as he had all along, that wherever she was now, Dumbledore would have been proud of him.

After a long moment of silence, as the sunset dimmed, dipping into the soft cluster of greying storm clouds brought on by the strengthening gusts of feral wind, Harry felt a tap of chill against his face, a splatter of rain. It's as if the castle and the land and the sky were mourning with him, and he didn't feel as alone and insignificant then, under the expanse of the evening sky reflected in the lake's still waters.

It was the thought that counted.

The wind ruffled the roughly braided wreath in the centre of the tomb, and suddenly a shudder ran through Harry, an echo of the tomb's stir, like an earthquake, like the river's chilly waters breaking free of its icy prison in springtime.

The wreath seemed to settle still and developed a white stony shine as if it was made of marble. It pressed in a flat ring against the smooth surface until it was one with it, a ring of daisies and heather and grass stalks, a design elaborately carved into the flat surface of a giant tomb.

Harry's breath hitched. This wasn't his magic's doing. This was something else. Disbelieving, he reached for the ring of carved flowers and ran his hand along its edge. It was cold as marble, and hard as stone, as permanent of a memorial as it can be, ready to withstand decades if not centuries of what time had to throw at it.

"Ariana," Harry whispered because it was only fair to say the name aloud.

And then, like a shimmer of one memory fading into the other, like a mirage revealing the view of the horizon to the weary traveller, like the rainwater washing away the grime, the space in the centre of the wreath seemed to warp and catch the last of the sunset's dying rays. Something flashed bright like a mirror until it made Harry's eyes water and he winced against it. The shine faded but the small square of fabric and colour remained: a miniature canvas woven from the stands that looked suspiciously like memories, covered with splashes of bright blue and pink and purple, dry and smooth to the touch. A raindrop struck it like a miniature drum, and after a second of peace, more followed. Harry swiftly covered the unexpected discovery with his palm, and then, the priceless weight of it still in hand, hurried back toward the castle, protecting the tiny canvas from the rain and the wind.

It was only in the solitude of the castle, on the steps toward the Headmistress' office (he had to get used to that word sooner or later now, he had no excuse) that Harry examined the tiny frame in detail. A pair of sky-blue eyes twinkled back, covered by the ever-present half-moon specs. A rouged smooth cheek and a curving, painted lip were new, but the stare was all the same. Warm and blissfully at peace.

A small signature in a looping script revealed the painter as Ariana.

 _This is a self-portrait,_ Harry realised. And then, as swift as any magic, the painting blinked and met his eye, just for a second.

And with that, on a single breath not taken, Harry suddenly knew what he had to do. He took the remaining stairs two at a time as he raced his way up the tower, refusing to wait for the circular staircase to take him to his destination. As he broke through the doors to the empty office of the Headmistress. As he brushed past the Pensieve in the corner, and past the empty chair and the rustling papers on the desk, toward the wall where Dumbledore's portrait frame resided.

He took a cautious breath, and then balanced the tiny, delicate painting of a woman's stare in the very corner of the heavy frame with an empty view of an oil-painted room.

 _Come on,_ he thought to himself. _Work. Just work! Please!_

The paint strokes of the miniature shifted and moved, until the cheery colours of it invaded the larger frame like springtime blooms, a figure coming into full view from the fog in the centre, standing tall, as if she had always been there. The colourful swirls of ribbons and fabric, the flash of grey curls and the fiery cloak, until, at last, Headmistress Ariana Dumbledore stood before Harry, the exact image he'd only before seen trapped inside the memories of another person, behind the surface of the magical glass.

 _She's real, it's all real._ Harry breathed in disbelief, catching the glint of gold on the plaque below. 'A. Dumbledore.' _She was there all along, and no one suspected a thing._

The woman in the painting smiled at him and lifted her hand, waving merrily in recognition. Her sky-blue stare looked more content than Harry had ever seen.

Harry put a hand in front of his mouth and all but collapsed into the nearest chair. "Headmistress McGonagall, are you there?" he called out weakly for his former Head of the House, who he knew would have been spending her last student-free weeks in the study nearby. After what seemed like an hour-long stunned second, as he heard his own words replaying in his head over and over, a striped tabby appeared through the doorway to the private library and gave him a curious meow, before lunging and expanding into a human figure mid-stride. 

"Um," Harry gestured mutely at his discovery, unsure of what else to say next but the obvious. "We might want to send a house-elf to Hog's Head. Aberforth needs to see this right away."

Behind him, Ariana beamed blithely, as she adjusted her skirts to sit down in the empty painted chair that somehow gained a garish upholstery in the colours of the fading sunset with a paisley silver embroidery pattern all over the edges. "Hello, Headmistress McGonagall," she offered. "I see the castle is in good hands. Congratulations on the upcoming school year. It'll be a special one, I can feel it in my bones!"

* * *

_"Keep your temper," said the Caterpillar._  
_Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass)_

It wasn't until the third summer hols since that fateful day, and many winters spent searching, that Harry did, indeed, meet Severus Snape in person. He looked at the location and gave up Apparating across the Channel altogether, opting instead to arrange a last-minute Portkey to Amsterdam.

The man wearing dark and plain Muggle clothing who caught Harry's eye in the place locals apparently called The Waterhole was almost a stranger, a few inches shorter and much younger-looking than Harry remembered. The man before him couldn't have been older than his twenties, a softer, smoother jaw but a nose just as imposing and memorable as ever. His oily hair, slightly shorter now, was swept back behind his ears. A white jagged scar peeked over the stiff collar of a leather jacket. The black eyebrow twitched and arched in a familiar way, and then, faced with that stern glare of someone decades older than his looks, Harry was at last certain of his discovery.

_Shit, it's him, it's really Snape. What do I do now?_

"Well," Severus Snape snapped, looking like a younger brother to the memory of the stern teacher stalking in and out of Harry's childhood nightmares, "Your owl was fortunate not to be maimed by my wards, Potter. What, pray tell, was so important that it couldn't wait a decade or two into my proper retirement?"

Harry blinked, wondering if Snape wore a disguise. His voice sounded just as spine-shivering as it ever did in the classroom. If this was a disguise, it was one hell of an ineffective one, since every former student would have surely recognised a relative of their Potions teacher in this Muggle bloke passing them on the street. Not that Snape had to worry about it often in Muggle Amsterdam, Harry reckoned.

Harry wouldn't get the exact confirmation until their third annual meeting, and a shared bottle of elf-made wine smuggled across the magical customs fresh from Hogsmeade, that Snape had discovered himself adrift and out of place after escaping the Shack to a hideout, after the Hogwarts Battle. His venom-weakened body recovered and yet, it was not the same as it slowly shifted back to every nightmare scenario of his youth when Riddle's decades-old spell faded slowly after his death, undoing everything Snape had worked for. Harry would never learn that once, upon facing the sight of a woman's middle-aged, weary face (much like Snape's late mother) in the bathroom mirror of the cheap hotel (rented with the Muggle identification which once more showed a name the sight of which made his lip curl), Snape would shake and retreat cowering into the corner, after putting a fist through the thin, crumbling glass first. And still, his arm would be far too delicate and his reach far too short to reflect the span of his impotence-spawned fury: years of concerted effort and unimaginable sacrifice drained as quickly as Riddle's magic was now gone from the world with his death.

Harry would only put the clues of their future brief conversations together and guess the rest of the long tale over the years of uneasy mentorship unravelling into something akin to friendship: that after the magic spell concealing Snape's childhood secret had faded, Snape had escaped to lick his wounds far away from the magical Britain, and had to fight tooth and nail for the chance to look like his former self again. Naturally, Harry would be curious enough to earnestly research the fact that Muggle doctors had chemically synthesised testosterone as early as the 1930s, first as pills and then as injections. It was all rather fascinating, to be honest! In fact, he would cheerfully tell Snape of every detail of his newfound research during their next meeting, just to be faced with the most long-suffering of stares, followed by the exasperated eye-roll of a lifelong brewer earnestly informed of the astounding use of dragon blood as a household oven cleaner by a well-meaning salesman.

But all of this was yet to come.

For now, Harry merely stood stunned by the sight in front of him, in the crowded pub, disbelieving the vision of - now that his mind had finally settled on a label for Snape - the bravest man he'd ever met. The only worthy place in his memory, besides the greatest witch, and Headmistress, he had the honour to meet (Hermione aside) who'd taught him to be the best he could be as he came of age. 

For now, at this moment in their history, the two unremarkable blokes with British accents went completely unnoticed by the crowd, as they settled in the corner table, away from the noise of the footy on the telly, a darker quiet place where the Muffliato went unheard and unseen and the waitress promptly forgot about them after delivering the first round of drinks.

Harry chose the spot by the aisle. Snape claimed the seat by the window, after casting a paranoid look through it and then moving the small pot of flowers between them onto the windowsill to block the view of any curious strangers passing through.

There was so much Harry had to say to the man, a collection of thoughts gathered over the long months spent searching for him. He wanted to ask how Snape had escaped with that bloody horrible wound to his neck. He wanted to state how honoured he was to be given that flaskful of memories. He wondered if Snape even knew about the bowlful of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans hidden away for what seemed like Harry's eyes only in that crumbling, abandoned house in Cokeworth by the dirty river. He wanted to see if Snape could still cast the Patronus, the same silvery doe that Harry's mum once held dear. He had to know whether having magic inside practically guaranteed that there must be someone different (a reflection, a name, a spark of a dream brought forth into reality) manifesting inner truths through one's portraits and one's reflection. He wanted to ask if this duality of existence was simply a part of having magic inside. Was Harry somehow an odd soul for trying to find his own identity, not as a boy but as a girl, searching frantically inside his own memories and glimpses of his past self and failing to find that girl, over and over again, no matter how hard he wanted to understand, no matter how much he wanted to relate to someone he so greatly admired. He could just hear Snape's answer to that with a resulting sneer: "Congratulations, Potter, you're perfectly ordinary for once. Enjoy."

There was so much left unsaid between them and it hung suspended in the air, thicker than treacle, but for once they had all the time in the world to let it stay unsaid, to keep the ghosts of the past at bay and reserve this time for needs as mundane and as human as any two strangers who had stepped foot through the door of this Muggle pub.

Snape's thin fingers curled around his pint. Harry took a sip of his, tracing moisture from the frosty glass across the cardboard coaster.

"There's someone you need to meet," Harry offered, proceeding right to the point. This was important, more important than any old grievances between Snape and him. _First things first. I'm just a messenger._ His fingers shook as he unwrapped a bundle concealing a miniature canvas full of bright splashes of paint rendering the silks of the colourful shawl and the greying curls tamed with several beaded braids. "She needs to apologise to you and so do I."

Snape's thin lips twisted into a questioning sneer, but Harry held his breath and hoped for the best as he presented the tiny frame to Snape's boundless scrutiny and watched for Snape's reaction. There was a shadow of disbelief first, a twinge of shock, and then merely rapt attention as the painted sky-blue stare met troubled, charcoal-dark eyes. 

Harry held back an accomplished grin. At last, he would finish what the portrait had asked him to do the first time they spoke in private at Hogwarts that one late summer's day. He had worked so hard to make sure that request would become reality, tracing Snape's steps from Hogwarts to Cokeworth, to London, and beyond, until the trail led him here, to the man himself. But Snape didn’t need to hear of Harry's efforts over the past year. Snape needed to see this before all else Harry could ever ask of him. 

And so, Harry waited until Snape's initial surprise had passed and then added quietly, an introduction of someone they both thought they already knew so intimately and so well, from the twinkling stare to the fuzzy unconventional socks.

"You've got a few things in common, I reckon," Harry held up Dumbledore's self-portrait to the light.

"Potter... what in Merlin's name?"

"This is Ariana."

Harry took in Snape's incredulous stare. This was a moment to treasure, it was not about him, at all. He was just a messenger between the two legends in their own right. He could have been anyone, he was just Harry here. Not the Boy Who Lived. Just a stranger with a funny scar and that was all right by him. "She asked about you," he said next. "A lot. You must have a lot to catch up on. But hang on, let me explain it properly."

Snape gave a small nod. "Go on." It was as obvious of an invitation as one could get, with Snape, anyway.

Harry grinned wide. "So one day, I was looking at those memories you left behind and I couldn't help noticing something was way off..."

There was a story there, waiting to unravel, and he had to tell it all, at last. Perhaps that was the point of it at the end. Having a chance to tell the right story, to the right person, at the right time, the best he could.

And then, Harry thought of the wildflowers soaked in the late-summer downpour, and did just that.

* * *

_"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."_  
_Ralph Waldo Emerson_


End file.
